


As Love from Lies, or Truth from Art

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Wherein Liz Entertains Various Thoughts about the Problem of Susan [4]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Adulthood, Aftermath, America, F/M, Family, Gen, Parenthood, Prompt Fic, Slice of Life, Starting Over, Teaching, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-21
Updated: 2009-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 08:43:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1976484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan left England, <em>after</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Love from Lies, or Truth from Art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silverblade219](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverblade219/gifts).



> This ficlet was written for [silverblade219](http://silverblade219.livejournal.com), in response to the prompt: _Narnia, Susan after the last book? I was thinking something later in her life, with her trying to continue living an ordinary life. Regarding Aslan, I tend to think that she would probably continue rejecting Narnia and yet I also kind of hope that at the end of her life she will be able to see her family again. However, I'm sort of curious how her day to day life is, which is not complete connected to Narnia, if that makes sense?_

Susan left England, _after_. The last summer she'd been happy -- before her family soured, before she turned all her fierce concentration onto seizing the frothy illusion of the present and letting the past and future fade -- she had toured America with her parents.

She went back across the ocean, chasing the sunset over frigid waves. It was better to be alone in a foreign land; she could pretend she had chosen to be apart, that her old life wasn't gone but simply tucked away in a corner, waiting for her to return.

She could never bear to do nothing, and frivolity hurt like knives through her feet and lungs now, hurt like Lucy's bewildered tears and earnest pleas. She needed to be useful, needed a purpose, a cause to distract herself. She went to college, became a teacher. Susan was good with children; she remembered managing Edmund and Lucy, and even Peter in his moods. She was strict but fair, and sometimes -- if her students had been particularly good -- she would tell incidents from history, dressed up as if they were fairy-tales. But she never told made-up stories. She never lied.

She married late. She'd always thought she ought to, since no one else was left to carry on, but she had gone cold, _after_. She had lost the knack of charming men. But no skill grows so rusty it cannot be dusted off and put to use again, and one day she found herself in conversation with a fellow teacher, then going out for coffee, then cooking him dinner, then meeting his parents, then holding his hands in a church and exchanging vows. His name was Thomas Hart. Susan took his name, severing her last tie to the past.

They had one child, a girl with mouse-brown hair, a narrow face, and a mind made to solve puzzles. Thomas named her Jane. She was nothing like Lucy. Susan was grateful, both for the lack of reminders, and because raising a child was something new, something she had never done in either _before_. Jane and Thomas were her anchors.

Jane grew, as children were wont to do, and proved both like and unlike Susan. She was never frivolous; she always thought of the future. She studied physics. It was an unusual choice for a woman. Thomas made skeptical noises, but Susan shushed him. She respected science. It played fair. And she had raised Jane to be practical; if her daughter thought she could be successful in her chosen field, Susan believed her.

Eventually, Susan retired from teaching. Her students (and their parents, and her colleagues) threw her a party. She gathered the children around her one last time and looked at their eager faces. They were so ready to believe, so ready to trust. Life had not betrayed them yet.

If she told them about four children who found a whole country inside a wardrobe, what would it hurt? What was the harm in a small fantasy to color the darkness they would slog through over the years? Susan closed her eyes. She pictured Jane, ensconced at a laboratory in California, happiness bubbling in her voice every time she called. She pictured Thomas, solid and warm, waiting at home for her that night. She pictured a life -- small and contained, perhaps, nothing glorious, nothing rare -- and set that against the weight of loss and promises unfulfilled.

 _Not yet_ , she told Lucy in her head. _Not yet, and maybe not ever._ She had her own life now, her own truth. It was good, and it was enough.

She told the children about Eleanor of Aquitaine instead.

Then she went home.


End file.
